No, it does not ... not by a long shot.

One thing common to all standards is that there is a single
authoritative source to go to in order to determine what the
standard is and if you are compliant with it.  That source can
be ISO, IEEE, Sun, Microsoft, GE, Lockheed, etc.  There are
GE Software Engineering standards that apply to all GE businesses
and (possibly) their suppliers (enforcement, of course, is another issue).
The hundreds of companies that create and sell ActiveX controls
go to the MSDN Library for the definition of their standard.

So the term "standard" always has a value-added meaning, which
is a single source for the definition of the standard.  From this,
a basis of comparison to the standard is established.

====================================
Richard Conn, Principal Investigator
Reuse Tapestry


-----Original Message-----
From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jacob Sparre Andersen
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2000 9:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Standards


Richard:

If you call proprietary "standards" standards, then anything
is a standard. It simply devaluates the word into
nothingness.

Jacob (somewhat annoyed)
--
"simply because no one had discovered a cure for the universe as a
 whole - or rather the only one that did exist had been abolished"